What is the difference between being responsible and being right? I am here to continue the reflection I started on my article “being right being wrong”.
You may think that this is a strange choice for a Christmas topic 😉 But maybe you will change your opinion at the end of this article.

Being responsible, or being able to assume our own decisions or our own opinions seems obvious. But what happen when those opinions are challenged or when we discover that our decisions had negative consequences? Then the temptation of finding excuses becomes extremely strong in order to be or feel right: it was not me, it is not my fault, you don’t understand me, I don’t care, I dindn’t have any other choice….. Are some expressions of the resistances we can experience inside us.

To take the responsibility that we are the source of something “negative” can easily make us feel … wrong. And then, it is very easy to react by proving that we are right.
To stand the experience of feeling wrong without react against it, without believing it is true and without fighting it is a challenge. When we do react against it, our ability of being responsible diminishes a lot. For example, a common way to deal with this is to blame others: people or situations or life.

I was confronted myself during the second part of this year with a difficult situation where the temptation to blame someone else was – and still is – strong. The perception of being betrayed, of being trapped in an unfair situation tempted me to consider the other person as “wrong”. When I’m right, I feel secure but my own sense of responsibility decreases. Being right allows me to not consider my participation, my actions, my intentions. It doesn’t open the opportunity to discuss, to expose what is important for me and to listen to what is important for the other person. Being right makes the situation sterile, dry and “automatic” because there is no personal engagement.

And here comes the link with Christmas 🙂
How many times – during this period – are you finding yourself blaming others? Blaming because you feel „forced“ into shopping and buying, or because you end up eating and drinking too much, or because of being stressed with all the things popping up at the end of the year.

Whatever is your opinion about Christmas and independently of the fact that you may be completely right 😉 the question is: what kind of person would you like to be in this situation? Or in other words: how can you take your responsibilities?

I find that those questions give us a huge help to regain a sense of responsibility on what we are doing, on our participation and on our intention.
It also help us to stop feeling like victims of what is happening around us and to reconnect with the courage it requires to stand for what is important for us.

In the personal situation I was mentioning before, this question supported me to clarify my values and my bounders and I taught me about connecting with my strength :-). It supported me in taking my responsibilities.

In the Christmas period those questions can support you to reconnect to how you would like to spend those days and think about the steps required to realize that.
Even if you may not completely realize what you wish, exercising your responsibility will give you much more energy that being right in a wrong situation 🙂
Merry Christmas!